Province in terror as Taliban return

As insurgents flood back into the gaps left by allied withdrawal, the handover of power to Afghan forces looks increasingly risky

Taliban fighters are seizing control of large parts of Nuristan province

The Al-Qaeda instructor spent an hour schooling his protégé, a 12-year-old
Afghan boy, in the art of suicide bombing.

Flanked by retired officers from Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI),
the Arab militant is said to have shown the boy how to approach his target
calmly before pressing the handheld button that would detonate the
explosives.

At the end of the lesson, the trainer strapped a suicide vest over the child’s
clothes and told him to demonstrate what he had learnt.

“Okay, so I walk like this,” the boy said as he walked across the living room
of a house built from mud and stone in the hamlet of Chatras in Nuristan
province. “And then I press this button. Like this?”

Before anyone could stop him, he pressed the detonator. The blast killed seven
men — two Al-Qaeda trainers, three Taliban fighters and, according to Afghan
officials, two agents from a shadowy unit